Scientists Are Learning How Weed Causes Paranoia

By injecting small amounts of the marijuana-derived drug into different parts of a rat’s brain and then watching for behavioral cues, they learned that THC works wonders in the prefrontal cortex and ventral hippocampus, but causes anxious behavior when dribbled into the basolateral amygdala.

German biochemists had an even better story to tell: Beat Lutz and his colleagues at Johannes Gutenberg-University studied an enzyme that is partially responsible for anxiety. Make a drug that can slow it down and you may be able to prevent paranoia.

They proved their point in two ways: Knockout mice, animals lacking the genetic recipe for that protein, were resistant to nervous behavior. Also, unusually nervous lab mice were calmed by an experimental chemical that inactivates the same molecule.

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Don M.: Armor commanders in the 1970s reprimanded infantry commanders if they used reverse slope defenses: They thought with a moment’s thought they could convert from defender to attacker, and intended to dominate the enemy’s forward slope. Of course if you could attack, or had adequate fire to dominate the enemy’s forward slope, you wouldn’t be defending.

Toddy Cat: “Jones recommends six-year terms for the House and more autonomous agencies like the Fed.” Congratulations, Mr. Jones, you are a leading contender for the 2015 Mencius Moldbug award, for doing an outstanding job of identifying a real problem, and then coming up with an utterly inadequate or unworkable solution!

Victor: With an incumbency rate greater than 90%, I think House members already have six year terms, if not more.

Dan Kurt: Democracies self destruct. Fiddling with the machinery is just moving the deck chairs on the Titanic after it hit the berg.

Letters in a Box: The problem is that over time, the system becomes more and more gamed as it is more and more understood. There should be an injection of randomness somehow in order to make it somewhat unpredictable. There should be constitutionally mandated lotteries inserted into the system somewhere, somehow, at some random times. I’m not enough of a wonk to know where, or how, but I can picture maybe a random 6 year term for some office holders, or having jury members (that have not been...

Lu An Li: The moment I read this article I think of Calvin Perry III and his interrogation. Young man accused of a mass murder in Ft. Wayne IN. Calvin finally hung himself before being charged for the murders. Confessed freely and openly and it was all recorded on video and audio. Seen this video and heard the audio and it was remarkable how easily the man gave it all up. The experts on interrogations all agree that the interrogation was text book perfect and ought to be used as a training tool for...

Tim: Interesting, but what about the moral fortitude of the “accused.” Personally I wouldn’t admit to anything as an innocent person. Make a credible threat against my family and I would take the fall since protecting them has a higher value than protecting myself.

J.D. Saunders: Psych studies in all this were conducted 40–50 years ago, roughly during the period between Milgram’s seminal “Obedience to authority” study and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Cult indoctrination methods and standard interrogation methods were thoroughly researched. Little has changed in the interim.